The View I feel a sadness when I enter the chapel to go to Mass. There are so many empty seats. People  simply are not coming back to Mass in the way they once did. Dr  Gladys Ganiel wrote last week in this newspaper about the results of a survey by the Iona Institute which…

Twenty years ago on August 2, 2001 I wrote to the RUC Chief Constable telling him that, as Police Ombudsman, I was making enquiries into a newspaper report, on July 29, 2001, that a man called Kevin Fulton, said to be a former British security force agent, had said that had the police acted on…

The View Strange things have happened in the Catholic Church during recent years. Once the hierarchy of the Church and her clergy seemed, to so many of us, to be in some way superhuman, immune to normal temptations, strongly united through the graces of ordination in defence of the Church and her people against the powers…

The View In 1993, the great American writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou wrote that “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be un-lived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again”. Northern Ireland has been trying to find ways to face its past for decades now. In 2020, the New Decade, New…

The View For a long time now Ireland has been battling the Covid-19 pandemic and her people – north and south – have been trying to work out the implications of the UK’s Brexit vote and the NI Protocol. It was never going to be easy. Since the UK left the European Union (EU) there have…

The View Little boys growing up today experience a different world from that in which our sons grew up. I remember teaching them to be polite, to open doors for people, to offer their seats to those who might need them etc. Now they tell me that some women interpret such basic courtesy as some…

The View The past year has been so very strange for all of us – our ways of being and doing were suddenly and utterly changed. We ceased to be in charge of our own lives. Once we were able to gather as a community of God, pray together and celebrate the great joys of…

The View Have you ever felt that perhaps you should not say what you think to the people you are with? It’s a big question. In a land in which we proudly proclaim our rights and our freedoms, we can still be afraid to say what we think, and even what we believe, because of…

The View Christmas is upon us. After a year which has been so strange, we look forward to celebrating the birth of our Saviour, the baby Jesus. For most of us it will be, and has been very different this year. Normally on the final Saturday before Christmas the St Vincent de Paul in Ballymena…